EnVerv, a chip design firm based in San Jose, CA, says this morning it has raised $12 million in a Series B round for its “system-on-a-chip” technology, which enables a utility to use its own power lines to serve as a smart grid communications network.
Benchmark Capital led the new round, which was joined by existing investors New Enterprise Associates and Walden International. The proceeds will go toward further development and working capital.
Reza Mirkhani, the company’s San Diego-based founder, is now EnVerv’s president and chief operating officer. Since I talked with Mirkhani about EnVerv and its strategy earlier this year, EnVerv’s executive chairman, Shahin Hedayat, the former co-founder and CEO of Santa Clara, CA-based Beceem Communiations, has stepped in as CEO. (Irvine, CA-based Broadcom (NASDAQ: [[ticker:BRCM]]) acquired Beceem for more than $310 million in October 2010.)
EnVerv continues to maintain a San Diego office and also has established an office in China.
The fabless semiconductor company says it has developed and delivered a range of high-performance power line communication (PLC) modems for utility smart meters, PLC head-end modems, display modems, smart homes, solar panel control and monitoring, and other applications. In recent months, EnVerv says it has been field testing its products in cooperation with its customers and utilities.
Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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